Diana is getting a haircut in Phuket town

And for that we paid 800 baht/night

Now that our journey has almost reached its end we feel almost obligated to name our favourite places and the best things we've experienced (and will try and do so soon...ish). Not only that actually but also places and things we had rather avoided if only we had had all facts beforehand.

One of the latter is definitely the beds we were provided with in Thai Charm Guesthouse in Patong, Phuket. Little did we know when we walked into the usually clean and luxurious room (well we noticed that the beds were a bit more narrow than normal but didn't put very much thought into that, blinded by the fact that we didn't only just have our own PRIVATE bathroom but also our own private really amazing bathroom) but we started to suspect that something was wrong the second we went to bed. The beds were so hard it was frankly impossible to endure more than five seconds in lying position. Or any position actually. They were so hard we actually felt we had to investigate things. And after removing the sheets from my bed its narrowness and hardness all of a sudden started to make sense.

It was a massage bed, fully equipped with a head hole. Only in Thailand I guess. And hope.

A summary of the last weeks

Just realized that the last proper update was from Langkawi on the 17th of January. And to be honest not much has been going on since then.

After Langkawi we took the ferry to Satun, crossed the Thai border and got on the bus for yet another endless bus ride (last one on this trip though!). This time Patong beach in Phuket was our final destination. First night we met up with Elin and Fanny for some drinks and delicious  Pad Thai. The rest of the time in Patong was spent relaxing on the beach, drinking fruit shakes and spending some time with Marjolein, a Dutch girl we've been travelling side by side with since KL.

Next stop was Phi Phi islands where we ended up staying for as much as seven nights! If it was for the fact that we fell in love with this beautiful little island or that we simply didn't have the energy to travel anymore we leave unsaid. A normal day on Phi Phi was spent eating a long and delicious breakfast, reading Håkan Nesser on the beach, eating a long and delicious lunch, reading some more on the beach, heading back to our guest house for showers and finally having a long and delicious dinner. Not bad at all. Marjolein joined us at Phi Phi as well and the evenings were either spent partying on the beach or just talking over a beer or two.

But again, every sun has its cloud and at Phi Phi this cloud was definitely all the party tourists, most of them Swedish actually (people didn't even bother to ask for directions in English, the possibility that you spoke to a fellow Swede was very high). The fact the the beach turned in to a massive dance floor at seven obviously made it look pretty bad the next day (read; cigarett butts, empty beer cans, used condoms, urine etc).
Luckily enough there was more than one beach to go to if you wanted to avoid all this nastiness.

We left Phi Phi today and are now back in Phuket for three nights before ending our trip with a quick visit to Jakarta.

See you back in London on Saturday!

Why we haven't blogged for a while

We're just spending our days like this on Koh Phi Phi. Plan is to keep on doing it until we get tired of it but I guess that the downside of that plan is that we don't experience anything exciting enough to write about. Sorry for that but we have our tans to worry about too, in just one week we're going back to London.

Langkawi island

So far we've never spent more then three nights in one and the same place (if not counting Vang Vieng we're we stayed four - only because we were to hangover to move). But we're now on our fourth day in Langkawi and do not intend to leave for yet a few days. It's so beautiful here, unbelievable.

The beach is just five minutes walk away, the sand is white, the water is turquoise, the beer is cheap and the food is amazing - what else can you ask for? So far we've spent all days just relaxing on the beach from morning till late with just a few breaks for food and ice cream, we are definitely not complaining.

One thing that stroke us both by surprise is the amount of Swedes here, we are everywhere! In every bar you go to you'll find a Swedish girl behind the bar, on the beach you're surrounded by Swedish speaking people, in the book shops you'll find books in Bahasa Malay, English and Swedish and I guess about half the rooms on our guesthouse is occupied by Swedes.

- is there even anybody left in Sweden?

On Thursday we're leaving for Phuket in Thailand to meet up with my friend Elin and her cousin that are just in the beginning of their South East Asia-trip, it's going to be awesome!

If anybody have been to Phuket or Phi Phi islands before and has any  good tips to share - please feel free!

What we have been up to

As we have abandoned the blog for some time I thought I better make a brief summary of where we have been and what we have been up to recently.

After Vang Vieng we headed for Vientiane, the capital. Most things we had heard about the city were true - less beautiful, more expensive and fewer things to do than other Lao cities.

After Vientiane we spent a few days in Kuala Lumpur which wasn't too nice either. Apart from Chinatown which was a cool place, most areas seemed to house buildings that was either banks or hotels. Also, the humidity (95%!) made it just impossible to enjoy anything at all as we were stuck in a big city.

I think that was why we decided to go to Pulau Penang, an island a couple of hours away. We had this idea of an amazing Malysian island paradise which unfortunately didn't exist on Penang. We got absolutely soaked both days we spent there so we decided to not think too much about consequences and flight tickets and go where the sun was. That place was Langkawi island and we haven't regretted going here once. It's amazingly beautiful, don't Google it unless you want to die of jealousy. Seriously, I mean it.

A funny anecdote

Just have to share this incident with everybody, definitely an evening to remember.

When taking the bus from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng we got to chat with a Canadian couple and their twelve year old son. They were out travelling South East Asia for ten weeks while being inbetween jobs. When we arrived to Vang Vieng we kept on bumping in to them where ever we went.

After spending the whole day tubing on Saturday we sat down for some food and of course we soon heard the familiar voice of Andy (the husband in the Canadian family). He had been sent out by his wife and son to buy sweets and was expected to bring it back as soon as he got it. But apparently Andy had different plans in mind and gladly joined us for a beer...or two..or three.. Until we all lost track of time and amount of beers we had bought. After what must have been three hours Andy suggested we should eat the sweets he bought with the idea he could just buy more later. With the sweets gone and more beers finished we decided to move on to a club to hit the dance floor. Andy seemed to think this was an excellent idea and joined us there too.

After dancing for a while (Andy being the oldest person there and also one of the most popular after showing of his dance moves) I heard another familiar voice behind me shouting "this is inappropriate!". And guess what? Andy's wife had been everywhere looking for him, starting with the bars and moving on to the clubs. He turned his head down and slowly followed his wife back home, trying to explain what happened to the sweets and what he did on the dance floor with a bunch of youths at one o'clock in the morning.

I wish I knew what he answered.

Luang Prabang

After that long painful busride we found ourselves in Luang Prabang the exact opposite to hectic Hanoi. Or as Mia chose to put it - "I like it here, it's calmer, quiter and... and... more monks around!".

We weren't up to too much in Luang Prabang to be honest. It was something about the sleepy atmosphere there, and I guess that the 30 hour busride was still fresh in memory because almost the only thing I remember us doing was to stroll around in the small city while eating delicious Lao baguettes (I'm getting a huge craving for one just writing about them!). I suppose that we enjoyed being able to walk down a street without having to worry about being hit by motorbikes every two seconds for once.

Some things we did manage to do though. On the second day we went to Kouang Si, a big waterfall some kilometers out of the city. That was just amazing, neither of us have ever seen water that blue before. If you didn't mind a bit of climbing you could actually go all the way up to the top and watch how the water made its way down. We'll try and post photos soon.

Our last morning in Luang Prabang we woke before sunrise to see the monks collect alms along the main street. It is quite strange how something like that has turned into a massive tourist attraction, apart from people selling fruit and rice to give the monks I didn't see a single local there! We didn't have too much time to look properly though, we had to rush back to the guest house to catch our tuk tuk pick-up for the bus that took us to tubing paradise Vang Vieng!

Tubing in Vang Vieng

Whenever you tell somebody you're going to Laos you'll get the response "Laos is awesome, you must go to Vang Vieng and do tubing". After reading stuff like "husband died in tubing tragedy" and "tubing is fun, but take care, many people die every year" we were not to tempted anymore. But since Vang Vieng is basically all about tubing we decided we couldn't leave without at least trying once.

Doing tubing is basically like going on a massive pub crawl. You rent a tube, get dropped off on the top of the river and left to float down in your own pace. Along the way there are maybe 20 different bars on each side, and it's up to you to decide on which and how many you stop and have a drink at. Some people we spoke to said they only made it as far as to the second bar before sunset. Some others stopped at three or four and instead of getting pissed, enjoyed floating around the river and look at the stunning view over the mountains.

We did something in between and together with a British couple managed about six bars. When you were tired of just floating around, you just had to give the bar staff a wink and somebody would throw you a roap and drag you in (we all started to feel a bit like fish). On some of the bars they had slides and ziplines, other had a nice rooftop there you could stay and sunbath for a while. When the sun set behind the mountains and we were still paddling to reach the final stop, we decided to give up and get a tuk tuk back to town. It had gotten way to chilly and our arms was sore from all the paddling.

Think I speak for the both of us when I say tubing was a lot of fun, and not at all dangerous if you have just a tiny bit if common sense.

From Vietnam to Laos

So, for some reason we've abandoned the blog for a few days. Might have been because of the sudden change in temperature (went from 15 degrees to 25!) or maybe we just had to mentally and physically recover from the 27 hour bus ride that took us from Hanoi to Luang Prabang, Laos.

On New years day we boarded the bus that was supposed to take roughly 24 hours and bring us over the mountains, across the border and in to Laos. After starting it all off by getting in and out of several different minibuses and finally being dropped of somewhere on the side of a busy highway with no instructions what so ever on what would happen next, we had a clue about how painful the upcoming 24 hours would be.

I must say the fact that we booked a sleeper bus (something we've never heard of before we got to Asia, it's pretty much a bus with beds instead of seats) made the whole thing much more endurable. Diana showed proof of incredible sleeping skills and managed to sleep about 23 hours (without even using valium pills). I could only pull off about 15, but was quite happy anyway. The rest of the time was spent reading (can't believe I managed to read in a bus that went up and down tiny mountain roads without getting travel sick ONCE!), eating Oreo cookies and glancing out the window to see the most spectacular views.

Not to bad at all, if it wouldn't have been for the lack of stops for food and toilets. We stopped to eat at 20.00 (one hour after departure), next time we stopped for food and toilet was at 14.30, the next day. It was rough, to say the least.

The mentality in Laos is much more laid back than busy Vietnam. We experienced this as early as at the border, where nobody seemed to be in a hurry (opening the office half an hour late, taking about one hour to stamp 12 passports etc) We arrived to the Laos border at about 7.00 in the morning and left with our visas sorted at 11.00. Neither of us had had any food for the last 11 hours which made us all very grumpy by the time the border staff finally announced that we were free to enter Laos.

In the end it was all worth it, Laos is amazing, especially Luang Prabang but that will be another blogpost.

In Vang Vieng

We are finally in Vang Vieng after a very bumpy eight hour busride over the Lao mountains. The road was straight in intervals of three meters during the whole journey! So now we are treating ourselves to fruit salad and Lao coffee before going out tonight.